By ANNE BESTON and AGENCIES
A space satellite has taken this image of giant icebergs floating and shifting in Antarctica's Ross Sea after breaking off from the Ross Ice Shelf over the past two years.
Some of the icebergs that have "calved" off the shelf have drifted out to sea
and melted, but other giant bergs can be seen clustered at the southern edge of the grey, mottled Ross Sea, north of the ice shelf.
Iceberg B-15A is in the centre of the image about a third of the way up and resembles a tall bottle resting on the edge of the ice shelf. It was part of the larger B-15 iceberg that was the size of Jamaica - 300km by 30km - and which calved off the ice sheet in March 2000.
Since then, the giant berg has split into sections, and between the sections is another berg, C-16, which broke free in May this year.
C-16 resembles a solid white finger pointing towards Antarctica, parallel to the edge of the ice sheet and about two-thirds of the way up in the photo.
C-16 is moving slowly north, and if it continues its journey it could splinter and become a hazard for shipping in the southern-most region of the Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile the Arctic ice sheet is melting at a record rate and is believed to be at its lowest since the 1950s, US scientists say.
The amount of ice melting from the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet has broken all known records and the Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level ever in the satellite record this year, said scientists at the Colorado Co-operative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
The accelerated melt appears to be linked with atmospheric circulation patterns and unusually warm temperatures in the Arctic Ocean.
Storms had also contributed to breaking up of the ice pack, said researcher Dr Mark Serreze, lead author of the ice sheet study.
Dr Serreze is a researcher at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center
Herald feature: Environment
